


Anchored

by YubiShines



Category: Portal (Video Game), Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, The Protomen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YubiShines/pseuds/YubiShines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And then the world turned and the city changed, and you were closed up in a tower, and there weren’t any songs, not anymore."<br/>Protomen/Portal crossover, diverges from "The Father of Death" in Act II, where Emily accepted Albert's invitation and became his right-hand man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchored

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucidSeraph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidSeraph/gifts).



> "Last night I dreamed I climbed to the top of a mountain of metal, and for miles I could see the destruction of man..."

You should not have followed. You should have stayed.

It was how you coped. When you felt yourself drifting—sinking into despair from the plodding never-ending day after day after day, almost keeping your head above water, almost keeping the wolf from your door, or, worse, going in the other direction, flying too high when you dreamed about days-to-come and what-might-be, and forgetting how hard it was to open your eyes and come crashing down—well, you knew how to plant your feet in the earth. These are the calluses on your hands, those are your sore muscles, you could tell yourself. These your anchors. These are your lighthouses, guiding you home when you were lost in the dark, in the uncertain cold.

 _Let me take you away_ , he said.

You should have stayed.

-

It occurs to you, with no small amount of irony, that the projects, the company, everything, really, was facilitated by your hand. You understood some of the technical side—you knew your way around machines, even though you had traded your factory uniform for tailored suits and skirts, and could tell a worthwhile endeavor from a wild goose chase—but that wasn't your job. Your job was to steer him.

The problem was, you see, that he was too good. He had the city under his thumb in a matter of months, with all those thousands of people hanging on to every word broadcasted from that tower. There had been no insurrections in that time, not even the whisper of one.

(You did wonder about that, in the beginning. Not one person would stand up? Not even one? Tom's face appeared in your mind, then, and you had shaken your head. Tom had vanished without a trace, without a note or a goodbye, and picking at that scab only caused unnecessary hurt.)

You had looked at him, and you'd thought: _What do you do, when you achieve everything you've worked for, and you're clever and restless and power-hungry and in the prime of your life? How long until you found the excuse to pick apart your prize, to identify the one loose cog in the machine and worry at it until it all fell apart into a glittering mess, just so you could do it all over again?_

It was you that directed his energy to research. He had the means, after all, and the intelligence, and now a whole city of idle hands that had to be put to work before it had the chance to be discontented. Soon, contracts were signed, construction went up, and when the laboratories were up and running you were so busy you hardly had time to think.

It was some time later, when you were sorting your old belongings, which to keep and which to throw away, that you found the letter. It was the one you never ended up sending, still folded in a coat pocket. You had run your hands over the envelope, just once, before tucking it away in your bureau.

It didn't matter, anyway. The time to send it was long gone, and that door had clicked shut.

-

The problem was, you see, you. What you had loved about Tom was his passion: passion for his work, for his ideals, for making the world a better place. It had hurt, yes, to see him pit himself against the world, willing it to change and only getting bruises for his troubles, but you knew when to pull him back before he burned himself out, and when to stand back and trust he knew what he was doing. And there had been the songs and the letters and dreams of leaving it all behind and just riding out into the desert, you and him, and making it out of the wasteland together.

And then the world turned and the city changed, and you were closed up in a tower, and there weren't any songs, not anymore.

He had been there, you see, after Tom vanished, and he had charisma, yes, and passion, yes, and a cocky smile that made most people stop in their tracks as if blindsided (not you, though, it never really worked on you). And after a while, it seemed as if his dream of remaking the city in his image was as worthwhile as he said.

And so you supervised the research and the robots, and you watched the Center grow and conjure up marvel after marvel, and you stopped questioning how many people went in the Center and how few came out, and you stood smiling at his side as the crowds cheered and called his name like it was a lucky charm, and you told yourself that this was what you had always wanted, back when you were some nameless orphan working the production line.

And the years passed.

-

No one expected it when it happened. No one could imagine the city without him. It had become unthinkable. You certainly didn't see it coming; for weeks, months he had been sequestered somewhere, toiling away on some mysterious enterprise. You had hardly seen his face in all that time. You couldn't have known he was ill.

You could not help a twinge of hope, however, like a rush of air from a door left ajar: that when he was finally gone, cold and still and six feet deep, that you could escape this tower once and for all. You could run away into the wastelands and take to the sky and at last turn your back on the city.

-

When they approached you and revealed what he had been working on all that time—hunting immortality, of course that was what he was doing, only he had fallen inches short of the finishing line—you had backed away.

 _No_ , you said.

 _You must_ , they said.

 _No_ , you said. _I won't. I don't want this._

 _No_ , you said. _No, stop. No._

-

There was no light.

-

When you woke up and you saw their expectant faces, the faces of the people that did this to you, and you saw the thing that was your body, anchored as it was to the ceiling—and now, of course, you would never leave the tower ever again, not under your own power—you threw back the head you no longer had and screamed with a mouth that roared from a hundred speakers instead of a single throat. You screamed for a very long time.

You should not have followed. You should have stayed.

-

Time passed.

You got the hang of it, by and by. It wasn't as hard as you thought, almost as if you were handling a great deal of it automatically, but you would certainly know if something had tampered so with your mind. Wouldn't you?

By then, most of the city had been working for the Center—it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began—and that made everything very convenient. Soon you began tailoring things to your own preferences—the sentry robots, the testing procedures, the way subjects were processed and picked. And if this wasn't what you wanted, it was well enough. And you made your own music.

-

Sometimes—it was an annoyance—sometimes you would see a furtive shadow around the complex, slipping between the walls, through the gaps in your vision. You could hear its footsteps, its scratching noises as it wrote on the walls. Sometimes you would examine the vandalism, when it was in range of your hundred eyes; you read the scrawled poetry and love letters, addressed to some unnamed person that the writer had lost, or abandoned, or left to drown under a mountain of metal, and in those moments you almost felt a twinge.

-

That was then, and now is now. Now you are about to begin another round of testing. You are looking down at the latest subject lying asleep in the vault. You recall from the personal records that the subject is unusually tenacious, pathologically so, but she was at the top of the list. It must be for a good reason. You think her name is Jo.

As she stirs and wakes up, you speak.

 **"Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. We hope your brief detention in the Relaxation Vault has been a pleasant one. Your specimen has been processed and we are now ready to begin the test proper."**

-

 _She was a lot like you —  
(Maybe not quite as heavy.)  
Now little Emily is in here too~  
One day they woke me up  
So I could live forever;  
It’s such a shame the same  
Will never happen to you~_


End file.
